Signing Your Track & Piracy in Deep House

*Let me first state that everyone has their own opinions and how they like to do things and everyone has their own beliefs. These are ours.*

That being said let me tell you what it means to us, as a Deep House electronic music label, whats involved in you signing a track with us and give everyone a reminder why I loath piracy.

First off a little reminder on how to send demo’s, demo’s that will help you stand out from the crowd and make the label happier to hear what you have sent, can be found in this blog post here “How To Approach Labels & Artists”.

On this note, there are a few quick things that really need to be stated again about sending us demo’s. This is the most basic of what you can do –

Please include your name, real and artistic. ALSO on the track itself which is in the correct genre, Deep House.

Write something!!! I don’t even care what you write, just write something!

Don’t send us “mass” demo’s or public tracks. We aren’t interested and I am NOT amused (ok sorry dork joke).

Don’t “sample” vocals or parts of famous tracks or any tracks you don’t have the right to for that matter. It IS illegal.

Now that you have sent your demo and the label wants to work with you, there are a few basic things you can expect and should expect from a label.

First is your personal information, such as your address and legal name for contract purposes, your biography, your press photo, the basic things that help a label understand who you are and allows us to carry on with the label work. You should ALWAYS get a contract, which I can’t make unless I have your information. I also can not write anything about you and the release, if I don’t know anything about you.

To be asked for the track in a .wav file. Some labels prefer you send a track mastered, most quality labels though are going to ask you for an unmastered .wav. If you don’t know what this means, google it. We live in an age where ALL knowledge is at your fingertips. Make it easy and send a clean unmastered .wav downloadable file from the start.

Yay you signed your track to a label! Now stop giving it away damn it. Don’t put the full track up on soundcloud or youtube or decide that you need to send out a “promo” of the release. If you want to send out a promo to all your closest 600 friends on facebook, you shouldn’t be signing your music to a label.

This does not mean you don’t have to promote your music though. Instead of going into it here, please check out this awesome post from Untitled Music “Good Music Doesn’t Just Sell Itself“. At the low end, just make sure to share the buy link, add the link to your soundcloud/youtube snippets and in general just share it with your family, friends and followers several times over, got it?

Communication! Ya that part where we email you about some details, info, whatever it is and you actually email us back, even if it is as simple as a “thank you” and if the label needs something, try to get to it in a timely manner. We are all working under deadlines to some extent.

Caring. We expect the artists to care about the music as much as we do. You should expect the label to care as much as you do. See how that works both ways?

Now this goes right into Piracy in all its forms. For example, did you know uploading the entire track, even on your own soundcloud, after you have signed a contract, without the labels permission is illegal? Know why that is? Because as soon as you sign your name on a contract, that track is technically no longer yours. Now of course, most labels aren’t going to totally freak out, and depending on their own rules, they may or may not ask you to take it down and replace it with a snippet (normally 2-3 minutes). This is a big part of you signing your tracks to a label, we are here to help facilitate the SELLING of your music and dispersal of your music to media and music lovers. Now, all labels are different. Some are going to not care if you give your music away, put it in its full length on soundcloud or never promote it. Some labels (and artists) see having their tracks on every illegal file sharing site as great promotion.

We do NOT.

Working with DeepWit means we do care if your track gets pirated and very much disagree with all the shit out there about how piracy doesn’t hurt anyone (you can read more here “The Misconceptions of Music Piracy”). In our experience, piracy does kill the sales and does not provide any meaningful exchange of potential customers or fans. We are not interested simply in working hard and paying for artwork, mastering, and promotion, to turn around and see the music being given away for free (which normally someone somewhere, that is neither the musician or the label is making money off of).

Now for a little controversy…why it is controversial for me to say this, I do not even understand. Just goes to spotlight how out of control piracy is. We hands down will DMCA you if we find our music on your website, your youtube video or anywhere else up for free where we have not given you our permission. Never am I going to tell anyone they are allowed to use our full tracks unless you license the music from us. If you ask, I will happily give permission for you to add a snippet of our tracks on youtube or for use as background music or whatever. The important part being you ASK us first. Unless you get the permission from the LABEL, not the artist, not the artists friends, but the LABEL then you using our track is ILLEGAL. It doesn’t matter if you are doing it “for the love of music” or to line your own pockets, it is ILLEGAL.

We are not going to bother to write you first before we DMCA you because thats not our job, its YOUR job to get our permission first.

It is as simple as that. If you want to support the music, the artists, the label, make it possible for us to keep providing quality music, which costs money. Not sure how piracy is costing the artists and labels? In this post I go over a few ways in which music piracy is a hell of a lot more expensive than the “Free” price tag it advertises “Loving the Music, Hating the Pirates”.

If you love the music, talk to the labels, the artists, share the buy links and rave about how awesome it is and how cheap it is to buy and standing with us against Piracy.